Large galaxies, like our own Milky Way, are thought to arise when lesser galaxies smash together and merge. But galaxy NGC 3621, shown here in an optical image released[2] today by the European Southern Observatory in Chile, seems to have missed the drama. Located 22 million light-years away in the constellation Hydra, NGC 3621 is a spiral galaxy but lacks a central bulge of stars. Such bulges reside in most spiral galaxies and often resemble the yolk of an egg. They typically form after a galactic collision, when the smaller galaxy dumps stars into the central region of the larger one. Somehow, though, NGC 3621 has managed to remain bulgeless, suggesting it never experienced a major galactic merger and thereby contradicting the idea that spirals grow by gobbling their lesser neighbors. The galaxy is part of a growing list[3] of bulgeless spirals that challenge current models of galaxy formation.